Or, as President Theodore Roosevelt said, ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’
Diplomacy, conflict, peace negotiations, economic sanctions, press conferences and draft statements, these are inescapable parts of our connected world. Information is currency, media is a product, and everyone has a story to sell. Violence is good for business, it is broadcast daily, and our global village is almost inured to it. But if we are to step back and heed line 7 of verse 3 (‘Oh hush the noise, ye men of strife’) of the American Christmas Carol ‘It Came Upon the Midnight Clear’, then perhaps we can look at the issue through a different paradigm? I would offer three examples why the engaged international community is reluctant to cede the use of force of arms in favour of non-violent peacebuilding methods. The three examples are from 20th Century history, and I will let the reader judge each one for themselves:
Example 1 – Sophie Scholl and the White Rose
Sophie Scholl was a peacebuilder. She abhorred the Nazi state confected by Hitler and his cronies, and sought an end to Germany’s futile participation in the Second World War through the medium of non-violent resistance. She was probably one of the most courageous victims of Hitler’s tyranny, declaring in court that “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.” Her death would subsequently have powerful ramifications for postwar German society, but that is not within the scope of this discussion. Nevertheless, at the time, her gesture was seen as a futile one, the Second World War didn’t end with her death on 22 February 1943, and Germany was not spared the agonies of the Battles of Kursk, Normandy, Berlin, or the Rhine.
In a totalitarian police state, survival was measured in compliance and conformance, and very few citizens were prepared to quite literally risk their necks. Instead, the messy, bloody, and demoralising business of the destruction of the Wehrmacht by the Allies had to be undertaken panzer by panzer, soldat by soldat, until Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945, and the Nazi Party and all German resistance collapsed a week later, on 07 May 1945. The lesson learnt by the victorious Allies sitting in judgement in Nuremberg was that only force of arms could deliver a just peace, and that non-violent resistance did not work. Peace was imposed by force of arms, and Germany remained an occupied country until reunification in 1990.
Example 2 – Northern Ireland and Operation BANNER
The island of Ireland was partitioned on 03 May 1921, in the aftermath of the First World War. Prior to the First World War, British politics had been convulsed by the Home Rule debate, i.e. giving Ireland self-governance. This proved to be deeply unpopular with the Unionists in the North, and the whole debate was shelved while thousands of Irishmen from all sides fought and died in the trenches of Flanders and Northern France on the Western Front. Many Irish soldiers sympathised with Belgium’s plight and fought for the rights of small nations, mistakenly thinking that Home Rule for Ireland would follow. It was not to be, and both halves of the divided Ireland became economic backwaters. This was especially pernicious in the North, where there was direct discrimination against the Catholic minority. Startlingly, this did not attract the attention of any of Britain’s postwar governments until the Civil Rights Movement exploded into violent riots and equally violent suppression in 12-16 August 1969.
The scene was set for the United Kingdom’s longest running military campaign (Operation BANNER), from 1969-2007. Aside from the various paramilitary groups in both communities and the security forces (predominantly the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) – now the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI)), there were countless peace activists on both sides who just wanted the bombings, the shootings, and the killings to stop. But, in the end, peace was imposed by force of arms. Professor Martin van Creveld argued that the British Army was unique in Northern Ireland in its success against an irregular force. It should be recognised that the Army did not ‚win‘ in any recognisable way; rather, it achieved its desired end-state, which allowed a political process to be established without unacceptable levels of intimidation. Security force operations suppressed the level of violence to a level which the population could live with and with which the RUC, and later the PSNI, could cope. The violence was reduced to an extent which made it clear to the paramilitaries that they would not win through violence.
Example 3 – Bosnia-Herzegovina and UNPRFOR
If the first act of the post-Cold War era was the Gulf War of 1990 (described by former British Prime Minister David Cameron as a highwater mark i.e. not the end of history but of a world of progress), the second act was the Yugoslav Civil War of 1992-95, with Bosnia-Herzegovina’s declaration of independence from Yugoslavia on 03 March 1992. Suddenly, the city of Sarajevo made famous once more by the Winter Olympics of 1984 was on the frontline of a Civil War of almost unimaginable horror. The term ‘ethnic cleansing’ became a familiar one on the nightly news as images of suffering were broadcast into people’s living rooms. The United Nations intervened in the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina to alleviate distress, but the mandate was too weak to allow peace to be built. The United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) could protect itself, but it could not protect civilians being ethnically cleansed, the most notorious example of this being the Srebrenica Massacre in July 1995.
At this point, the engaged international community decided that ‘enough was enough’ and after an attack on Sarajevo’s main marketplace in late August 1995, NATO directly intervened with Operation DELIBERATE FORCE and subsequently deployed a substantial Implementation Force (IFOR) to impose the Dayton Peace Accords on the ground. Serbian ultra-nationalists had another attempt at creating a Greater Serbia in 1999 and, this time, there was no UN Protection Force – NATO intervened in Kosovo in strength and stopped Serbian aggression in its tracks (whatever Sebian armour survived NATO airstrikes turned round and went back to Serbia itself). The situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina remains volatile and the country is hardly an economic success story, but there has been no large-scale resumption of violence, and the engaged international community has taken the win.
So what?
Winston Churchill supposedly said that ‘Jaw, jaw is better than war, war’ (in fact, the popularised phrase comes from another British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, in 1958, who was echoing Winston Churchill, who said ‘Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war’ in Washington, D.C. in 1954). Churchill’s substantive point was that dialogue was far superior to conflict resolution than violence, and it undoubtedly is, but Churchill also recognised that sometimes it is impossible to avoid conflict once it has started. If a party to a conflict does not wish to engage in dialogue, what other means are there to compel them to the table? This is the dilemma for policy makers and peace builders, and remains valid to this day.
What, then, if anything, should policy makers do? Dialogue must be the starting point for conflict resolution, but if one side does not wish to talk, there needs to be a method of engagement which focuses minds. Ultimately, force can compel attendance at peace talks, but does not work in isolation. The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World is a treatise on modern warfare, written by General Sir Rupert Smith and published in 2005. Smith’s decision to write The Utility of Force was prompted by his experience in the Balkans. According to Smith, ‘no act of force will ever be decisive’ because the aim of modern conflicts is to win the will of the people, which will not be achieved by battlefield victory alone. He asserted that force is only part of the solution to modern conflicts; they require complex political and military solutions. It is the task of policymakers to recognise this and to align a political strategy with the military plan.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jason Fensome is a Staff Officer at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, where he is responsible for the delivery of Technology Enhanced Learning in the Joint Services Command & Staff College. Apart from his specialisation in military Information & Communication Systems he is also a CIMIC practitioner and a graduate of the European Security & Defence College and the NATO CIMIC Centre of Excellence. As a veteran of stabilisation operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and combat operations in Iraq he has witnessed first-hand what happens when peacebuilding is given differing priorities.